The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without a most fatuous contribution from James McAvoy as he accepted a nomination for best actor at the Olivier Awards this week. He should have stuck to sobbing and thanking his agent. Instead, he launched a feeble and trite attack on the government for supposedly thwarting social mobility by failing to fund the arts. According to McAvoy’s thesis, ‘Art is one the first things you take away from society if you want to keep [people] down.’
It’s true that several of the British stars in prominent recent films attended private schools — something that McAvoy says doesn’t bother him, even if it has upset shadow arts minister Chris Bryant. But that isn’t for want of drama courses at state schools. Last year, 76,000 students took a GCSE in drama, far more than took Economics (5,400), Latin (10,000), German (60,000) and not all that short of the 97,000 who took IT and the 137,000 who took Physics.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in